Harmonising GBS surveillance: How PROTECT will assess the burden of disease in Africa
Group B Streptococcus (GBS) is the leading cause of sepsis and bacterial meningitis in newborns, posing a significant threat to their health worldwide. Vaccines to protect pregnant women and newborns against this bacterium are currently in development, and PROTECT partners are helping medical sites in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Uganda establish systems to collect data on the current GBS disease burden and potentially conduct maternal vaccine trials.
Medical sites in the four African countries will receive support through the project to collect data on GBS disease. By doing this, they will be able to understand the baseline incidence rates of disease so that when vaccines are available, data can be used to assess their effectiveness and impact.
Partners have already engaged four medical sites in each of these countries, and protocols have been developed to ensure that all researchers collecting data follow the same procedures. In all four countries, sample collection was planned to start by the end of June. As a final step in ensuring the collection of quality data at all sites, Dr Sergio Massora from Fundação Manhiça in Mozambique, who leads PROTECT’s work on GBS surveillance, visited partners in other countries to hold training sessions and inspect the sites.
Photos from the training in Mozambique.
Photos from the training in Kenya.
Local partners introduced him to their patient identification and blood culture collection processes, showed him around the labs, and organised trainings where he presented the protocol to the local staff. Dr Massora was able to identify the specific challenges the staff were facing and helped them address them before the data collection started and throughout the process. One important lesson that has emerged from the visits is the utmost importance of not only initial training for staff but also the repetition of such capacity-building activities throughout the project. The sharing of best practices as they emerge at different sites is also highly beneficial for everyone involved and is facilitated by the fact that similar work is happening simultaneously in different countries.
Photos from the training in Malawi.
Harmonised data collection tools are crucial, as they enable researchers to compare the collected data and gain a deeper understanding of the disease incidence in different settings. By the end of June, medical sites in all four countries have started to collect data. This process will continue until June 2026, at which point partners will be able to move on to analysing and publishing the data, helping to close the information gap on the burden of GBS disease in low-income countries.
